Introducing Natively - Now with Movies & TV Shows, Korean, Spanish, German and More!

Nah, I pretty much never look at the author stats. I don’t know most of the authors I’ve read by name, and even when I do I can rarely recognize their name in kanji (at least not at a glance). I just found it funny that one of the only things Bookmeter provides stats on doesn’t even work correctly.

1 Like

The formatting in my review is pretty brutal… What’s the timeline for getting some basic markdown for reviews so I can have some proper bullet points?

2 Likes

Ugh I know. It’s the next priority after this sprint, so in the next few weeks. Hoping to finish this sprint up next week.

1 Like

You can edit the name of the author in the entry, which solves that issue as well.

What, where can you do that?

It’s only for books you have added (and probably computer only?), but go to the list view, and then:

It lets you edit the author and page number.

3 Likes

That’s handy, thanks!

1 Like

I also just want to call out all really great reviews, like yours, coming in recently - it’s amazing to see :slight_smile:

It really is time to improve that interface.

3 Likes

Speaking of reviews, I had given up on ドグラ・マグラ a long time ago, but seeing bison’s review made me realize I might have stopped just before the point where it becomes good. :sweat_smile: I’ll probably give it another try in the near future.

1 Like


:eyes:
new feature, I take it?

edit: just went and poked around more. this update looks fun :smiley:

3 Likes

Shhh! You beat me to the product update announcement :sweat_smile:… working on that now. It is fun!

5 Likes

PRODUCT UPDATE

Ok this is a mega update! The highlight is that page counts & reading stats are finally here! Natively is starting to become a fully fledged book tracking site :slight_smile:

Summary

Progress Tracking

You can now update your current page on a particular book. If you’ve finished or stopped a book, you can do that as well.

You can also update the total page count for your particular book. I know people read different editions and this can be an issue.

You can create a timed reading session as well if you want to track your minutes per page.

Days Read Tracking

You’ll notice below the ‘In Progress’ section is a new ‘Days Read’ widget. Here you can keep track of your days read, simply by clicking the days. I’ve backfilled some days read by simply marking the ‘date finished’ for any of your books as a day read. If you’d prefer to not have this backfilled, please let us know.

FYI - we will not be auto-marking days read beyond the initial backfill. So if you update your progress on a book, you will also need to mark the day read. I thought about auto-marking today as read if you update a book, but wasn’t sure. I would love feedback on that potential mechanism.

Profile Activity Tab

There’s now an activity tab on your profile! Here’s where you can see all your (or someone else’s) stats and personal feed.

On your own personal activity tab, you will be able to go back and mark days read in the past. You can even mark entire months read :slight_smile:

Down below the calendar, you’ll see bulk stats and any timed sessions here. Additionally, if you need to edit timed sessions, you can do that here.

This stats section is still very much a work in progress. There will be graphs coming soon…

Updated book edit popup

The ‘Open additional options’ popup which allows you to edit your book information has been overhauled a bit. You can now edit all your information in one consolidated place - date finished, status, current page… etc.

Blocking Users

blocking

You can now block users by simply going to their profile page and clicking the gears icon. The ‘stop following me’ is a soft block - it only blocks them from following you. ‘Block’ is a global block - they won’t be able to see your profile or activity in the global feed.

Page Counts

As you might guess, as a part of getting the stats going, I added page counts to the books. Do note that Amazon doesn’t have complete data here… we have > 90% coverage right now, but will be working to get more page counts.

Library Index Update - Top 500 Manga & LNs, 本屋大賞 (in progress)

Just wanted to say - All the top 500 manga & LNs from AniList have been added to the index! Many are not graded, but they’re there. We’re now working on the 本屋大賞 prize winners, will be adding akutagawa & naoki prize winners soon.

BIG SURPRISE - Designed a new (future) homepage, will be slowly rebranding the entire site!


(top banner)


(whole homepage)

I decided we’ve reached a point where we needed to professionalize the design and so I’ve been working with a designer. I love this new direction! What does everyone think?

It will be a big task to change the styles and redesign things, so don’t expect this new homepage or anything quickly… but it’s coming! :slight_smile:

Upcoming

For this sprint, I’ll be focusing on finishing off stats and moving into reviews:

  • Add some graphs for the stats page / better stats
  • Begin to build new homepage and incorporate styles into site
  • Begin to overhaul reviews - add markdown, ‘liking’ reviews, JLPT recommendation?, improve reviews ui

Phew! Ok I need to do smaller updates :sweat_smile:. Please do let me know about any feedback you have, especially the progress / days read updaters… I know everyone has different wants, so it’s hard to navigate.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

15 Likes

Wow this is HUUUGGE! Thanks so much for all the work on this, these new features are super exciting!

EDIT:
I’m particularly excited for both the pages read and days read features, as they’re feature I love about Goodreads and Bookmeter respectively but which aren’t together or done as well as it looks in your screenshots.

1 Like

Woohoo!! I know, I’ve been dying for a book progress tracker because I don’t read books fast :joy:

1 Like

Same! My goodreads account has something like 20 books “currently reading” - and I don’t think it exposes a good way of visualising those metrics.

Likewise I love the “days read” feature on Bookmeter, but it seems to derive pages read solely based on finish date - which as I tend to chip away at things slowly over multiple months - is just always off.

Edit: wanted to also say thanks for approving my book additions, and sorry I haven’t got around to reading & rating one of them yet (王様ランキング) >.>

2 Likes

I love all of it even though I probably won’t be using all of it. I used to track my minutes (don’t anymore), track my reading days using Loop, keep my page counts in spreadsheets, etc etc. Your site is turning into a one-stop-shop though!

re: graphs - something I’ve been toying around with for my own amusement is making a year-end gantt chart.

Example


Made using Google gantt charts but there’s fancier stuff out there which is much more customizable of course.

I like this graph type because it visualizes the progress made over time which is fun.

Very excited for the site face-lift and also for pending review input overhual! :tada: I admit to writing all my reviews in Google Keep and then copy/pasting them over. When I type in a tiny box I am inclined to write very little which I think has already been mentioned here.

One small potential bug I did notice is that I updated two books I’m reading with page counts and they showed in the activity tracker - however I moved a manga volume to in-progress and added my current page and neither of those actions show. Is that intentional because it’s not the first volume, or possibly a bug?
edit - clarification - I set the start date to yesterday so it’s just too far down the global feed to see. Only the pages update is missing.

3 Likes

I’m wondering if this is due to a difference in setting the current page number from the “update” button (which launches a dialogue just for updating page count) vs setting the page from the general dialogue which allows you to also set reading status, dates, and lists.

2 Likes

Right, calculating when pages are read is a bit of an … art. Bookmeter, I think (?), simply averages the page count of a finished book over the time you read it… or something like that. I’ll do something similar if I don’t have any partial data from you (i.e. you never update your progress while you read). If you do update your progress, then I assume those days were read on the date of that progress update. It’s not perfect and probably can be improved… but hopefully it’s ok and good enough for you!

Yes! Hopefully xD. That makes me super happy to hear!

I do like that graph! I’d love to incorporate the notion of difficulty levels paired with reading over time… could make a really cool visual.

But I think this v1 of stats is mostly going to focus of pages read over time, split by book type. At least, I know I need that graph. I’ll think about that gantt chart, it is very cool.

Wow! You all are quick! @chrisosaurus is exactly right… I haven’t got the popup up firing page update activities. I was going to stealthily fix tomorrow and hope no one noticed, but I guess i’ve been found out :grimacing:

2 Likes

Hahaha to be fair I’m also a software developer, and I was keeping an eye out as I was playing around with the new features.
Honestly it’s no biggie, we are all just super stoked for these new features - even if they have rough edges or bugs - this is a massive leap forward in site functionality!

3 Likes

It’s been a while since I read much of the forums, so I just got around to this.

Is this the solution you ended up settling on? If so, I suggested at least one book for the wrong category.

Since you said you plan on adding prize winners, do you plan on adding that information (i.e. which prize a book got) as a searchable tag?

Love the new design. Great color choice, very simple and nice. :ok_hand:

2 Likes